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paulraphael

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Everything posted by paulraphael

  1. Carbon steel is less porous than cast iron, so the seasoning just doesn't stick to it as tenaciously. But I notice that in places where it's used, like restaurants, no one seems to care. They just let the seasoning form and flake off as it will. I don't know why your rice is such a good scouring pad. Other than starch being a naturally good glue.
  2. Conventional wisdom says don't use it on teflon, but that might not be based on anything. I don't know why lye would attack teflon. It could make a mess out of any aluminum it contacts. So I guess you could make this work but you'd want to be careful.
  3. You even have to be careful with regular oil. Especially the kind of refined oils people are most likely to use (canola, safflower, etc.). These are high in polyunsaturated fats and so are the most efficient at oxidizing, polymerizing, and turning into a bulletproof coating. Just like what you want on iron. I notice this as a brownish coating that first shows up around the sides of frying pans. It's not coming off.
  4. Peterson's Fish & Shellfish is a good one. I also like Ripert's old Le Bernardin cookbook, which has recipes for some of their iconic sauces.
  5. I would not do this. If you did actually create a "seasoning" layer as you would on steel or cast iron, it would probably make the teflon stickier. That seasoning is made from polymerized and carbonized oils. If you get actually get the oil hot enough to carbonize, you'll start breaking down the teflon, ruining its qualities and creating toxic particulates. And if you don't, you'll make the pan sticky. Either way, that polymer layer will be tough enough that there's not much you could do to remove it that wouldn't wreck the teflon coating. If you don't heat it enough to even polymerize it ... then you just have an oily pan. You should probably wash it, otherwise it WILL polymerize next time you preheat it. Makes no damn sense.
  6. One of the many things I like about the show: a more true observation of the creative process than I think I've ever seen in shows or movies. There are a bunch of scenes where Carmen and Syd are working on dishes for the new restaurant. There's an intense collaboration: trying things, rejecting things, talking them out, trying to put impressions into words, circling, homing in on something, failing, trying again, agreeing, fighting, egging each other on ... I just don't recall seeing anything as convincing as this before. Writers usually fall back on lazy clichés like the "Aha!" moment, and other kinds of dramatic revelation. They don't show what the real work is like. This is as true for shows about chefs as for ones about artists, musicians, writers, scientists, inventors ...
  7. I don't understand why hot cocktails aren't more popular. Why doesn't every bar serve them all winter long? Irish coffee especially is perfect. It's every food group in a single glass: booze, dessert, caffeine, and hot.
  8. My grinder (for brewed coffee) is a static factory. I've used a little atomizer for this technique for a couple of years now. It works. I mostly have to do in the winter when the air's dry.
  9. We're joking, but really, I don't see why something couldn't be made with that basic design for regular person prices. Scale the power back (or make it so you can't have all the burners running full-tilt at once) so it can run on regular split-phase power. And don't build it out of 500 lbs of unobtanium.
  10. Here's the way to do it: Garland GME36-120C range, with genuine knobs and huge 5KW induction surfaces. Of course you'll need $25K for the range, and probably another $25K to run 3-phase power to your house, and it's commercial, so you'll probably void your homeowner's insurance. But who cares—you get knobs!
  11. The regular electric flat-top range (not induction) that came with our house does the pulse thing. I indulge sadistic fantasies about the company's entire engineering team every time I use it. What an utterly negligent and insulting way to design a stove. There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with regulating heat with pulses. Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is common for things that need precise control, like immersion circulators, and even audio amplifiers. But the pulses have to be very short! My stupid stove has pulses and pauses that are maybe 20 seconds long. Wish me luck with the hollandaise sauce.
  12. I don't have btbyrd's experience with induction, but everything he says reinforces my suspicions. I've been researching these things and it seems obvious that the coils are too small and the interfaces are unacceptable. I do look forward to good ones. I don't know if I trust appliance manufacturers to ever make them. Meanwhile, gas ranges have become something of a scapegoat and a distraction in environmental policy debates. To lower your carbon footprint, there are dozens of things with a vastly bigger impact. Including replacing gas furnaces, boilers, and residential hot water heaters. If you're worried about indoor air quality, get a good hood. Change residential codes to require them. If you don't have one (and probably no one here does, because hardly anyone even makes good ones for homes) you're breathing bad stuff no matter your heat source. At least if you cook hot. Which you do if you enjoy good food.
  13. Most mobile knife sharpeners (and most stationary ones) are super aggressive, and grind way too much metal off your knives. You'll probably get a dozen sharpenings before they look like skewers and have to be replaced. I made the mistake of taking my knives to a commercial joint once, at the recommendation of a local butcher in Providence. They came back with about 1/8" taken off the blades, and a deeply concave edge profile from the grinding wheel. Luckily these were just Chicago Cutlery knives, I leaned to never do that again. “The goal is to get the knife sharp while taking off the least amount of material," says the Green Point Knife Truck man. This means he's not the typical knife truck man.
  14. This. But also be aware that it won't necessarily take longer than a roast with fewer ribs. The weight and the length are not especially relevant*. The cook time depends mostly on cross-section (distance from surface to center). Assuming you control for all the other variables. *Except! Counterintuitively, having more length, and therefore more surface area, could speed the cooking. Because it will contribute more humidity to the oven, and therefore reduce evaporative cooling. This is why 2 chickens roast faster than 1.
  15. “The goal is to get the knife sharp while taking off the least amount of material" This is great to see, but not the practice of most of the sharpener trucks I've seen. Choose wisely.
  16. I'd suggest that all edges are rounded, unless they were made with an Edge Pro or other guide system. No one's hands are steady enough to make a flat bevel on a kitchen knife. A stop will automatically make a slightly rounded microbevel. You can see it with your electron microscope.
  17. This is true, and it's why I suggest you don't do it all the way. At least if it's a big chip. If you you fully repaired every ding, your gyuto would become a barbecue skewer in just a few years. A good sharpener / repair person can advise on this. I sent a knife to Dave Martell when I borked it trying to sever a turkey neck. He fixed it about 90% (you could still see evidence of the chip with a loupe) and was able to do it while taking off just a fraction of a mm of metal. Dave seems to have gotten out of the biz; I'd trust btbyrd's recommendation.
  18. It's very easy to cut a strop, even if you know how to use it. It can happen when you start to go fast, and are just a little sloppy when you set the edge down at the beginning of a new stroke. Leather is very soft for a knife. My old strop is kind of embarrassing looking. I used to strop as a final polishing step. I'd go from a 10K Naniwa finishing stone to a horsehide strop loaded with just a pit of 1-micron (I think) diamond abrasive. It's a polishing step, not a deburring step. You don't risk rounding the edge like you would if you acted like an old-timey barber. Technically, you're going to round the edge a tiny bit because the edge will sink a bit into the leather. But also technically, you round the edge a bit whenever you sharpen by hand, because you're not a robot and can't hold perfect angles. This doesn't seem to stop anyone from getting killer edges. I stopped stropping recently. Jon at Japanese Knife Imports encouraged me to try finishing at lower grit, and skipping the strop. I'm not getting the insanely refined edge I used to get ... the kind of thing that would drop through a tomato under its own weight. But I get a longer lasting, functional edge. A super polished edge seems to depend on being perfect; as soon as it wears a bit, all the magic is gone. I now stop after a 6000 grit stone. No strop. In exchange for that last little bit of refinement, I get an edge that continues to cut well for hours.
  19. I've had a chance to look through the 4th edition, and I'm impressed. Also surprised ... several years ago I wrote to Peterson, half fan mail and half proposition. I'd been immersed in Planet Modernist Cuisine, and had been rejiggering all my sauces and stocks and glaces with new ingredients and techniques, and thought maybe the sauce guru himself would like some help updating the classic. Or at least some encouragement. He said he liked the idea, but would need someone to pay for it. He sounded more tired than enthusiastic. I didn't hear anything more from him. And then the 4th edition came out less than a year later! With zero input from me. I have a sense of how long publishing takes, and have no idea how he pulled this off. Unless it was already in the works when we talked, and he was keeping it a secret ...
  20. I think I'll try one of these.
  21. If I were shopping for knives, I'd take a look at those Misono Swedish steel ones with the dragon graphic. Good prices for classic workhorse carbon steel.
  22. My main microplane is so dull it was defeated by a lemon today. Time for a new one. I'm curious which model people prefer. I've noticed just about every professional cook uses the long skinny ones. They seem like they'd be kind of inefficient. Are they popular because they fit easily in a knife roll? I've always bought the paddle-shaped ones, with a more rectangular plane. They make more sense to me. And can be stuffed into a knife roll if needed. Am I missing something?
  23. I recently finished the bottle of Uigedail I was so enamored with. By the end I'd gotten kind of tired of it. I love the smoke and peat, but started to find it a bit too sweet, almost like a gingerbread house. Something cookie / biscuity about it. I then had a sip from an old bottle of Lagavulin 16, and thought, hello old friend. I'm intrigued by the special editions of Lagavulin but don't have the budget. Has anyone tried the other no-age-statement Ardbegs, like Corryvreckan?
  24. Yes. https://www.academia.edu/21375139/Polymorphism_of_milk_fat_studied_by_differential_scanning_calorimetry_and_real_time_X_ray_powder_diffraction Looks like you could experiment with cooling rates.
  25. From what I gather, aging with an espresso machine is just hard work. Breville has great customer service, but once the thing is out of warranty, it may be difficult to find parts. They're all proprietary. If you go with an E61 machine, you have the promise of eternal life (high-quality, industry-standard parts that will be available forever). But people tell me it can be almost impossible to get service. There are so few people in this country who know how to work on these things, they're perpetually backed up, and they give priority to restaurants and cafés who have service contracts. My friend's Profitec machine has been out of service for over a year while he waits for an opening from the one guy in the midwest who works on them. His wife has started to go down youtube rabbit holes and attempted to replace parts, with very mixed results. Edited to add: this all stacks up in the Breville's favor, if you want to be completely rational about it. You can probably replace the thing for the price of overhauling an E61.
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